Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Magic Banana Awards, 1998

FilmGold: Run Lola RunSilver: Great ExpectationsBronze: Get RealRunners up: A Bug’s Life, Shakespeare in Love, All the Little Animals, The Mighty, Sliding Doors

Quite a good year for films, with four of the films making my top 80 of all time. Surprisingly, in my whole selection, only one film is an Oscar nominee for Best Picture, and that was the one that won.

I loved Run Lola Run for its sheer originality and thrill. Great Expectations with a smart new spin on a good novel, and Get Real is one of the most beautiful, painfully sad films about love that I have ever seen, and, after Brokeback, ranks as my best film about gay/lesbian relations. A Bug’s Life was Pixar shining again, and Shakespeare in Love was enjoyably, funny, and offered some insight into the making of a great play. Whether any of it was true or not is irrelevant.

Ben Silverstone was the heart of Get Real. He stole the show with his innocence and bravery, and we completely empathised with him. Jim Carey, so used to being branded a cheesecakey actor, astonished in a serious role. It seems to be a good year for young actors, as Christian Bale shone as a mentally impaired boy, finding friendship in nature, and Kieran Culkin shattered hearts with his turn as a kind-hearted but crippled genius.

All three medals go to very deserving performances. Gwyneth Paltrow was brilliant in her half-dramatic, half-comedic performance in Shakespeare in Love in a relatively un-Awards friendly role, and made up for Joseph Fiennes’ bland performance. But she was also great in a low key film, Sliding Doors, where she tackled her double role with perfect skill, creating two completely different characters. That said, Cate Blanchett was the very embodiment of Queen Elizabeth I. I also liked Cameron Diaz’s comedic turn.

John Hannah was so lovely as the perfect boyfriend that I feel it would a sin not to reward him. He was then even better in the latter half of the film, when the slight ambiguity of his character started kicking in.

It was a tough fight between Shakespeare in Love and The Truman Show for the first spot. The latter had a great premise with some deftly written characters, but in the end I opted for Shakespeare, because it was a beautiful blend of romance, comedy, drama and history.